


Can We Keep Him?

by dremma



Series: Saving Private Loco [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, No Pizza Quest, No Time Fuckery, Season/Series 15, Tuckington maybe if you squint, except for the unnamed sim troopers bc fuck those guys, slightly Grimmons-y, sorry Chrovos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29745126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dremma/pseuds/dremma
Summary: In which Grif gets to be the Big Damn Hero for once, Tucker is far too used to Caboose’s impromptu adoptions, Dylan Andrews helps keep the plot moving, and Wash gets his pizza with garlic knots. 15:20 shuffled around so that Everyone Lives and Wash Gets Pizza. No Sammie Raphaellos’ were harmed in the making of this fic.
Series: Saving Private Loco [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186220
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Can We Keep Him?

“Get away from my pals, you dipshit.” Grif took a running leap and swung himself into the room. Temple stared in amazement as Grif’s bulk traced an arc directly for him. Grif swung his arm back on descent, aiming for Temple’s helmet. Temple shook himself and tried to take a step back, but it was too late. Grif landed heavily on him and he heard a sickening crunch from his leg right before Grif’s fist connected with the visor and the lights went out.

“...Jesus Christ, Grif.” It was almost a whisper, but Grif could recognize even the faintest reverberations of Simmon’s nasally timbre. He turned and gave Simmons a winning grin, invisible behind the visor, and raised his arms in a flex. Simmons huffed. "You idiot," he said fondly.

“Caboose! I have something for you!” Loco ran back into the room, something clenched in his glove. He slowed as he saw Temple’s prone form with Grif standing triumphantly next to him with a foot propped on his chest. “Temple! Oh no! What happened?”

“He’s just taking a nap, Loco. Evil monologuing really takes it out of you,” Tucker cut in, trying hard not to laugh. “What do you have for Caboose?”

“Oh!” Loco said, remembering, and running up to Caboose. He deposited two batteries into Caboose’s hand. “For your friend, so he can keep running.”

“Thank you, Loco! Now Freckles can run and play with us again!” Caboose threw himself at Loco and grabbed him in a huge bear hug.

“Not to… butt into this tender moment, but Loco, can you shut this thing down so it doesn’t absorb the entire Earth into a black hole?” Dylan said hurriedly, offering the toy controller.

“Oh, uh. I _did_ install a stop button in it. But, I need the door, you know, the DOOR. To open! For… for reasons,” he finished, sounding uncertain. He turned to Caboose. “For you. The door I told you about.”

“Oh, yes. The DOOOOOR. The one that’s not a door. I remembered!”

“Yes! It should open soon. Any time… Now!” Loco stepped back, and a portal opened up in the middle of the machine, onto a bleak landscape all too familiar to most of the people in the room. A blue-armored soldier turned around in confusion.

_“What the fuck… Caboose? Rookie, what are you doing up here, you’re supposed to be in the base, man!”_

\--

Caboose sniffled quietly as the portal closed. Loco patted his shoulder comfortingly.

“Hey, Loco, about that fail-safe, I think we need to get this thing shut down,” Tucker said quickly, feeling jittery about how the thing was starting to shake and glow.

“Oh! Yes. Here, hold on.” He punched some buttons on the controller and the high pitched whine of the machine slowed and deepened until it stopped. 

The entire room shared a collective sigh of relief.

“You know, I’m surprised there even was a fail-safe,” Simmons said. “Usually evil villains want to make sure the plan can’t be stopped by well-meaning heroes.”

“Wellllll,” Loco started, rubbing his helmet awkwardly. “I never _used_ to put them in, until, well, until this one time my machine drilled through a big part of our base, and the water, well, it all came in and filled up the rooms, and Temple got really, really mad, and told me I had to make a button to make it stop juuuuuust in case something bad like that happened again.”

“Oof,” Grif muttered. “I’m kinda glad our ‘genius’ just makes friends with powerful killing machines.”

“Like Freckles and Locus?”

“The biggest threat to our bases lately has actually been Donut, though,” Sarge grumbled, sparing a glare for the pink soldier. 

“What? I said I was sorry! And besides, you banned all my candles anyway so it won’t happen again!” Red Team’s bickering picked up again, and Tucker and the news crew sighed.

“We should probably get out of here, actually,” Dylan said, motioning to Temple’s still form. “The UNSC will be hot on our tail.”

“Yeah. HEY ASSHOLES!” Tucker shouted. “Let’s make like a tree and get the fuck out of here, I wanna go home!”

“Tucker, wait!” Caboose ran forward, hand clutched around Loco’s. “We can’t. We can’t leave Loco here, the police will take him.” Tucker turned around to glare at him.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what _should_ happen, Caboose. Don’t you remember what these fuckers did to us? What _he_ did to us? What he did to that voice message from Church to trick us into finding them?”

“I… I mean, yeah. But. But he turned off the machine so no one would get hurt! And made a way for me to say goodbye to Church. And…”

Red Team and the News Crew exchanged glances and snuck out of the door.

“I don’t want to leave him here, Tucker. He is my friend. And sometimes friends do bad things. But friends should stick together!”

Tucker glared at both of them for a minute, but soon his shoulders took on a slight slump. “Oh, Jesus Christ, whatever. I guess if he causes too much trouble we can just drop him back off at the UNSC’s doorstep. YOU,” he continued, pointing a finger and stepping towards Caboose threateningly, “are completely responsible for him though. You show him around, you feed him, you make sure he doesn’t bother anyone else.”

Caboose gasped. “THANK YOU TUCKER!!!”

“Fucking hel-- Caboose, _stop_ hugging me! We have to leave!”

“I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS THANK YOU SO MUCH TUCKER!”

“GET. OFF!!”

“Tucker! Caboose! We’re gonna leave without you, get out here!”

\--

“Hey, uh, Jax, right?”

“Yeah, hey, Simmons, how’s it going?” Jax stepped back suddenly. “Wait, you’re not gonna hit me again, right?”

“Hit you? No. I uh. Well. Sorry about that. You _were_ kind of being an asshole, though.”

Jax shrugged, and waved his hand airily. “No big, it’s an occupational hazard.”

“Right. Well. I was wondering. You’ve been recording a lot of stuff of us, right?” Simmons was nervously fiddling with his glove.

“Y--wait.” Jax paused, and thought. “Which answer is less likely to get me hit again?”

Simmons sighed, shifting his weight nervously. “I said I wasn’t going to hit you. I’m just wondering if you have, you know. Footage of when Grif swung into the room and crushed Temple?”

“Oh, yeah! Yeah, that was really cool. That crunch when his leg broke was _super_ gnarly! Here, I’ll clip it and send it to you.”

“Awesome, thanks!” Simmons saved the file to several backup servers as soon as he saw the incoming notice on his HUD.

“And, uh, if you guys ever need a wedding videographer, just hit me up--”

Simmons took a step forward, fist raised.

“Agh! God, I was kidding, just kidding!” Jax backed up and lifted his hands to protect his cameras.

“I know I said I wasn’t going to hit you, but you’re really making me reconsider.”

“Jeez, touch-y,” Jax muttered. “Didn’t mean to overstep.”

Simmons made a very Sarge-like noncommittal grunt. “Well, thanks for the clip, anyway.”

He’d intended to kind of fix it up and send it to Grif, but for now… well. He’d watch it a few times to figure out what he wanted to do exactly. Maybe a few more times. And a couple more…

\---

Loco fidgeted a lot on the plane back to Chorus. He was worried about Temple. His leg looked like it was bent the wrong way when they left. Temple had been mean to him, sure, but they had been friends at one point. They all had… until everything started going wrong. “Is Temple gonna be okay?” Loco said in what he hoped was a whisper.

Caboose nodded. “Tucker said his leg is just broken and he got knocked out so he should be just fine. He probably just needs some orange juice and maybe some aluminum.”

“It’s aloe, Caboose,” Sarge murmured, waking only slightly before falling back to sleep with a loud snore. 

“Yes, that.”

Loco nodded, still feeling uneasy. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to come live with you? I think your friends are still mad at me.” He glanced at Tucker, who was nodding off, balancing a box of pizza and a bag of garlic knots on his lap.

“Oh, that’s okay. We get mad at each other all the time, but things always get better. Some of us did bad things but then we did good things and things are ok again. Like when Grif said he hated us but then he brought Locus and came to rescue us! Or when Church left us without saying goodbye but then he and Principal Carolina came back to rescue us! Or when Tucker says he hates my guts but still packs lunch for me anyway!”

“Church would find a way to come back and haunt me if I didn't,” Tucker grumbled sleepily.

“Well…okay,” Loco said, the knot in his stomach unclenching somewhat. Caboose grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“Oh, I can’t wait to show you all the cool stuff on our moon base, and for you to meet Freckles! We’re gonna have so! much! fun!!”

“Caboose, stop shouting, I can hear you all the way up here,” Grif called back from the cockpit.

“Sorry! Sorry,” he stage whispered. “This is gonna be AWESOME!”

“Caboose!” everyone shouted in unison.

“SORRY!!”

\--

“Hey, Emily! I brought something for our fallen hero, is he awake?” Dr. Grey looked up from her datapad and smiled.

“Oh, well isn’t that sweet of you! He should have just woken up, head on down!”

She waved Tucker down the hall to where Carolina was sitting in a chair outside the room, helmet tilted to the side, unmoving except for her breathing. Was she asleep?

“Hey, you’re almost cute when you’re asleep--WHOA!” Tucker backed up suddenly, very narrowly missing a fist swinging into his junk, pizza box and bag of garlic knots balanced precariously in his left hand.

“Hello to you too,” Carolina said dryly. “I see pizza went well.”

“Aw, hell yeah, it was amazing. Grif was right about that place. Grey said Wash should be awake. You want some pizza too?”

Carolina stretched, standing up out of the chair. “I probably should. I’ve been too worried about Wash to look for food.”

“Is he okay?” Tucker knocked quietly on the door, or, well, as quietly as one could with armored knuckles on a hollow, faux-wooden door. Carolina declined to acknowledge the question. He was _stable_ but ‘okay’ would be overselling it.

“Hmmm?” Wash’s voice sounded incredibly sleepy, like he’d just woken up and was rubbing his eyes. Tucker pushed the door open and peeked in.

“Heyyy, there he is, the man of the hour! We brought you pizza, dude! And garlic knots.”

“Oh, awesome,” Wash said hoarsely, a grin tugging up the corners of his mouth. “Thanks, man. Hey, ‘Lina. You joining us, too?”

Carolina gave him a fond smile, blinking back whatever tears had been forming. “I think I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> never written and posted something in one day. well at least not since high school lol but loco and caboose have been running my brain the past week so, here they are.
> 
> it did occur to me that being shot in the throat probably meant Wash was on liquid-only diet for quite a while but, come on. while we're shuffling everything around we'll just gloss over that so the poor man can have some delicious pizza after everything


End file.
